Traffic vs. Offer

There was an interesting debate in one of the marketing forums today about which is more important for the marketer – to be able to drive significant traffic or to be able to craft very appealing offers.  It seems a “guru” is saying that there is never a traffic problem.  If the offer is great, it will be found and people will buy.

The discussion thread began with the following quote from a very prominent marketer (I’m not going to say his name . . . mostly because the poster couldn’t remember for sure exactly who it was . . . I know who it was but it’s not relevant to this discussion).

Here is the quote: “There is no such thing as a ‘traffic problem’ there are only ‘offer problems.’  If you spend all your time on the offer, you can’t fail.  If the offer is great, everyone is going to want to promote it, and you’ll make enough money to afford the best SEO guy, the best ad guy, etc …  People think they need more traffic, but what they really need is a great offer.”

Forum members lined up in both camps, some saying that offers are nothing without people seeing them (traffic to the offer).  Others argued that with enough traffic, most offers can be sold for a profit, even a not-so-great offer.

So what do you think?  Do great offers sell themselves?  Is getting traffic to your offer never a problem?

Here is my two cents on the topic:

Debating which is more important to marketing success, a great offer or the ability to drive traffic, is really not the point.

It’s not the point because you don’t need to be deciding between one or the other.  It’s not as though you have to decide upon one at the exclusion of being able to incorporate the other into your selling campaigns.

Both are possible, both are very important, and both go hand in hand . . . it’s the way smart marketing is done and that should be your goal.

A great offer might sell itself . . . but you know that if you can drive tons of targeted traffic to it you’re going to make more profit from it than if you don’t.  Think about how long it would take to get an offer in front of a targeted audience if no traffic was purposefully driven to the offer page?  Sure, eventually some people would find it and the offer might go viral and be spread all over the niche.  But do you want to base your income on waiting on that possibility?

On the flip side, sure if you’re good at driving traffic you can sell a mediocre offer . . . but you know that if you have a fantastic and compelling offer you’re going to make more profit from it than if you don’t.  Great offers aren’t inherently more difficult to craft than lousy offers.  It’s just that you have to know what you’re doing and have the skill to understand what will turn the offer into a great selling machine.

“It doesn’t matter how thin you make the batter, a pancake always has two sides.”  That’s what my grandma used to say!

So the question becomes:  how can you craft a fantastic offer and then drive tons of traffic to it?  Why not strive for the best of both worlds? Why can’t you have your cake and eat it too?  Internet marketing offers you the opportunity to always do both.  But most people “settle” and don’t strive for the win-win.  IMO, it’s not great offer vs. traffic.

It’s great offer + traffic = many sales.

Figure that out and you’ll make way more money than if you simply debate the issue and set up your camp in one side or the other.

I always encourage online business owners to employ as many marketing and promotion tactics and strategies to the selling campaign as you can.  Now that doesn’t suggest that you include methods that aren’t profitable or that don’t work given the time and effort it takes to implement them.  You always should strive for a profitable return on investment (ROI).  But by including numerous marketing tactics you potentially widen the scope of your offer’s “reach”. . . you cast a wider net and will typically pick up more sales than you would expect with fewer selling approaches.

To your online business success!

Steve Browne

www.stevebrownedirect.com